


A Slip of Paper

by PermianExtinction



Series: Tropoverse Canon [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Aftermath - Chuck Wendig
Genre: Arkanis (Star Wars), F/M, Gen, Genuinely Evil Characters in Genuine Love, Grief/Mourning, Hux's Mom is Dark Side, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Love Letters, Moira Dovhain - OC, POV Second Person, Project Harvester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-24 23:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16185455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PermianExtinction/pseuds/PermianExtinction
Summary: Brendol Hux pens a secret letter to the woman he loved and lost.Side story toFellow Outcastsand sequel toThe Empire Needs Children.





	A Slip of Paper

Dearest M

_he does not write beyond the initial, for how the pen trembles in his hand_

I have neglected our correspondence. How much have recent events taken out of me? It was a well-worn ritual to sit and pen my thoughts, though I admit I preferred the wooden desk and the fresh air to this stale cage.

_the words flow a bit easier_

I ask myself what is so different now, compared to five years of much the same separation, and there is no easy answer, because five years can blur past, and five months can drag on, and I am betrayed by the thought that one day I will have known you in letters longer than I have known you in person—

_the nib scratches harshly_

But this is not novel, so I won’t bore you. Would you be surprised to hear that the stale cage I referred to was not particularly metaphorical? I meant it to be, before I remembered my circumstances. So laugh at that if you like. This old fool has made himself so miserable he can’t notice the difference between an office and a prison.

I let myself become, however it was you said, abhorrently dull. It was directed at the right person for once. But still a weak-willed, helpless one. You were right that anger is more easily contained than listless malcontentedness longing to be as vivid as anger. I would very much like to be angry at that foul, sneering traitor Rax, as I once was. I was angry through every dismal meeting, every time he vacuously praised me, or more vacuously threatened me, for every grain of sand that got in my boots. It wasn’t his power over me that stopped me laying hands on him, it was hate. Hate is simple enough to endure.

I hated that sanctimonious Grand Admiral, too, from the moment she dared speak of you to me, as if you were a stain on my shirt, as if I should be ashamed to have known you. By the stars, did I hate her. And I hated — you will not forgive me — the child she mocked, how he proved nothing of your legacy. If I could have brought out a child with more power in a drop of his blood than she had in her whole body. I would have spat in that woman’s face and said, here, see for yourself what you believe I wasted my reputation on. But I had nothing. And you really were gone. There was no wonderful, wild witch of the deep. There was a kitchen woman, and Grand Admirals cannot be shamed for speaking ill of them.

I hated Sloane, and easily held myself back, until I saw her wretchedly clinging to false hope. I hated Rax, until he was a sad little pet waiting loyally for his mistress. Without hate, there was only pity and disgust.

(I hated the boy. I hated him so much, for having your eyes, eyes that judged me and blamed me for what happened to you, for his shrinking away from my touch, for coughing in the night and crying out for you, for forgetting you just as quickly and taking after me, the jealous bully. But he is a miserable creature, and I cannot help but pity him. I am glad to be locked away.)

_the writing grows cramped at the bottom of the back of the page, until he can dot the full stop and pick up the next sheet_

You must be thinking of that first row we had. I ignored you for a week, and there is nothing you hate more than being ignored. Maratelle eventually asked about my blackened mood at dinner, if you can believe the irony.

Imagine the truth coming out — “I know that you resent me, wife, and you think I still covet you, with your youth and wealth and title, and perhaps you still covet me, or want to hide your resentment. You can’t possibly know that you’re keeping me away from the woman I want — who hates to be ignored — every night you ask me to bed, and I wish you did, so you could accuse me and I could take offense and slap you, just to save me from another game of pretending your body was hers.

“But now she has called me abhorrently dull for even thinking it, flippantly at first, but I saw real disappointment begin to fester. She wants to be in love with a madman. But she does not want to be in love with a man who beats his wife. Your unlikely hero. So I fought with her instead! You should know she is a heartless, pitiless brute when she wants to be, and I have seen her snap necks with a wave of her hand, just because someone has got in her way. The hypocrisy! I told her she was so caught up playing house, that she forgot what kind of man could love her. Only the worst.”

I told Maratelle I had quarreled with one of the instructors instead. At least she let me go that night.

I’ll never forget ascending to the highest floor of the tower and finding you by the open window in that great laboratory, watching the sea churning up a midnight storm. You spoke of lightning. How it forms as particles are torn apart, strained until they cannot bear the separation. How the wind on the sea can do this, but those pure in the Dark Side of the Force can do the same, tormenting the air with their will so it breaks and screams. How there are so many things in life that are unbearable, that pull on a person’s heart until it cannot take the strain. Wanting one thing, wanting another, two desires that can never be united.

You said there was always a point when the pain could crash together and unleash a wrath of energy that made it all worth it. You advised me to turn around.

I felt like a schoolboy waiting to be stripped when I covered my eyes and ears and bent over and pressed my face to the desk, where all your notebooks where flapping their pages in the howling wind.

_the air in the cell is stiflingly still_

What would I have seen when that flash of light and whipcrack of thunder filled the chamber, shook the very foundations of the building? You, embraced by the lightning, as it arced down from the sky and into your outstretched palm. A blinding figure wreathed in energy, turning to pour it all into that colossal vat of brine you cooked up, your primordial soup.

And I know you were still angry at me for ignoring you, and you were proving your power, proving that you would always be stronger than me. I know you wanted me to be afraid, and I was. And you wanted me to stand up on wobbling legs, and turn, and see the scar branching out of your eye to the center of your brow, deepened in shade and doubled in size. The mark _he_ gave you when he cast you out. So that I’d feel to blame for it. I know you were being petty and cruel. It was the Dark Side you called on, after all. You looked ecstatic, still invisibly electrified. Your galaxy was brought to a violent balance.

And then you were all smiles, the usual sith-may-care attitude, admiring your handiwork with the vat of organic material. My mad scientist was back.

You wrote, in your journal: _Life was born when the bright wrath of the dark side touched the salt of the sea._

I didn’t imagine what your quest to create life would eventually become. I knew for years I was sterile and internalized a twisted pride about it, claiming my inability to pass on my genes inspired what would become my life’s work. It never occurred to me that we played out the act of creation again and again (and again, that night, so starved for each other). Or that your magic would make it real.

Or that it would tear us apart. Or that when the unbearable strain of separation was finally released in our reunion and you got your rush of power, your bright brilliant wrath, it would be an overdose. I know it took your life. Not Sloane or Rax or the Republic blockade or even that horrible bounty hunter. You were always reckless when you were high, and you were never much of a pilot. I could have warned you, but I came to idealize you so greatly in your absence. To me you were the most powerful woman in the universe.

_waiting for that dam to break, but he finds himself stone-faced_

I never wanted to take that away from you. It suited you too well, to be monstrously beautiful. But it did drive you mad, as it has done with me. And I was sick with anger that I could not rightfully mourn the empress of the deep, but I could not mourn a kitchen woman and a commandant’s mistress either, even though there was the Moira who wanted to gut fish and go to market in the rain, who wanted to be held and loved and chased down to the beach after oversleeping yet again and burning all the breakfast. She is dead too.

You. How could I leave you alone? I thought I could finally be with you again. That damnable Sloane and her damnable mercy.

I am too tired to weep for you. I don’t feel anything. Without you, there is nothing to feel.

Yours eternally,

B


End file.
